


Beautiful Warrior

by pet_genius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Child Murder, F/M, Gaslighting, I've really got nothing and I'm just testing the water, Incomplete, M/M, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Relationship(s), Very incomplete, will add tags as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:49:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27595742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pet_genius/pseuds/pet_genius
Summary: Sequel to Black Star (Severus/Regulus). After Voldemort's demise, Bellatrix is in Azkaban, plotting her revenge against the traitors and struggling with unthinkable truths, at great peril to Severus's and Regulus's hard-won happiness.
Relationships: Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Voldemort, Regulus Black/Severus Snape
Comments: 31
Kudos: 16





	1. Azkaban/Mercury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aga1127](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aga1127/gifts), [Trickster32](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trickster32/gifts), [Scarlet_Blade9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarlet_Blade9/gifts), [legion11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/legion11/gifts), [gelledee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelledee/gifts), [Aureia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aureia/gifts), [ThePhoenixandTheDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePhoenixandTheDragon/gifts).



> This is very incomplete, i.e. I'm just testing the water to see if people like the beginning and if this is something I should work harder to develop. Also, this is incompatible with the official Black Family Tree because it makes no sense.  
> Black Star is at https://archiveofourown.org/works/22211695/chapters/53032402  
> Enjoy and please please please tell me what you think and what you might like to see <3 Thanks for reading!

After the final battle 

It’s cold. Cold enough to pierce her lungs with every breath. She sits frozen and shivering in her cell, hot tears running down her face. They do not freeze, because the cold comes from within. It wasn’t long ago that they dragged her in here, bound, gagged, thrashing every which way, trying to scream. Moody captured her, and her incapacitation was the turning point in the battle. She fought with everything she had but still, they took her wand, threw her in a cell and locked her in. But she has love in her heart and it will not die. Not ever. Even from her cell she knows that she is the luckiest woman in the world, because she has been chosen by greatness that cannot die, she has proven herself, and he will come for her even if it takes a million years. For him, she will wait, for him, she will endure. _Did you expect this to be easy, Bella?_ She hears him saying to her. _I did not, My Lord,_ she answers, in her mind.

It is just as well that they put her here without a trial – she fought for him before all the world. For _them_ to judge _her,_ determine _her_ innocence? She would have admitted everything with her head held high. She does not recognize the authority that put her here.

It is better to endure the Dementors than his anger – that she knows. She must persevere and never give up, never forget him, never stop loving him, because he will come for her, and he will know if her faith wavers… no one can lie to the Dark Lord. He will come for her and when he does, she will be ready. They will walk hand in hand, he will support her staggering weight, and everything will be the same. No, better.

***

Bellatrix had just finished unpacking her birthday presents. She was the happiest girl in the world – she got everything she wanted, a puffskein, a shiny toy broom, a toy wand she could use to make colourful lights appear, and a beautiful dress to wear for her upcoming birthday party. She was so warm and happy she felt her heart might explode. She kissed her mum and dad a dozen times to thank them and they looked at each other fondly.

“That’s not all, Bella,” her mother said.

Bella’s mind could not fathom it – what more could they have given her? What else could there be?

“This is the last birthday you will celebrate as an only child. Soon, Dad and I will give you a little brother or sister. Are you happy?”

She looked at them with wide, shiny eyes and screamed in ecstasy. Her own brother or sister, her own best friend! She could picture it – racing their brooms, comparing their wands, she would read him or her from Beedle as soon as she would learn how to, they would develop their own secret language, she would show him or her the little corners of the house only she knows.

She hugged her parents’ legs. This was the best birthday she’s ever had, but the next one would be even better.

***

It was a boy. A beautiful baby boy, and Bellatrix fell in love at first sight.

She was even the one to pick his name. “Mercury,” she decreed. “Merc for short.”

She took to him immediately and her parents praised her daily for how good she was with him. She loved his twinkling eyes and his laugh and his dark hair that fell in curls on his cherubic face, just like hers when she was a baby.

Everything changed when one day, she accidentally dropped him. His crying woke up the entire house. “What is this infernal racket?!” Mum demanded, and Dad followed her, and both of them were furious.

Bellatrix started to cry herself, but she managed to explain that she had dropped him. “So? He’s nearly two years old, he would have bounced like you did, why is he crying?!”

“But he didn’t!”

Her parents exchanged worried glances. Nothing happened at first, but they grew more and more concerned. She heard them talking to one another in French. She never told them, but she had already picked it up, and she pretended to be very focused on her food when Dad first said the child might have no magic.

“It’s not true,” she told Merc when they played alone. “You’re _definitely_ magic, they’ll see.”

He had to be - how could she love him so much if he wasn’t? He would show it, she just _knew._

But she had pictures from when she was his age, where she could already ride a toy broomstick, and in his pictures he merely walked while the broomstick lay inert beside him. She handed Merc toy wands and nothing whatsoever happened.

He could already talk a little, but according to the Black family tradition, babies weren’t introduced into society before the age of two.

Bella was sure that it would happen then, in all the excitement of meeting everyone.

“I am not introducing it. It’s probably not even mine,” Dad said. He was unshaven and he was angry. He started drinking something cold and amber-coloured in the morning, instead of his usual tea.

“Then what are we meant to do with it?” Mom asked miserably.

“We? You made this mess. You must have made it with a filthy half-blood, or less, you whore.”

“Cygnus! Not in front of the children!” Mom cried out. She asked him in French if he had gone mad, told him he had to stop it with the “feu-liqueur”.

He continued in French. “[I have one child, Druella. We’re not introducing this lump and that is final. Get rid of it.]”

That night Bellatrix heard him crying; she jumped out of bed and ran to his room, and her parents held a bloodied and unmoving thing. It was silent. When her mother noticed her, she told her to go back to sleep at once, and Bellatrix ran back to her room, but she didn’t sleep.

“You had a very bad dream last night,” her mom told her. “We were very worried about you.”

Merc’s chair was gone. There was no sign of him.

“Where’s Mercury?” Bella asked. “Is he okay?”

“Mercury?” Mom asked, with an expression of utter bewilderment. “Who is Mercury, darling?”

She never had a brother. It was a dream, it was all a very bad, very long dream.

She finished her breakfast and when her stupid pet puffskein went into her room, she bludgeoned it until it stopped moving.

***

Cissy came to visit. "Cissy". If Narcissa thought her sister had anything to say to her, she had another thing coming. Lucius was a free man – Lucius, who had happily taken his place beside the Dark Lord when he was the one who had brought the traitors in. After a couple of attempts, Narcissa gave up. The wizards in charge of inspecting the owl post came one day with a letter for Bellatrix – it has obviously been read, and they hadn't bothered to charm it so it might look like it was not.

> My dear sister,
> 
> it pains me beyond words that you are imprisoned in this dreadful place. You must know we love you and we can help you get out if you would only help yourself. We could discuss it more if you agree to come out. It is loathsome to me that something has come between us, when we have been raised on such noble values. Toujours pur - family first.
> 
> I had hoped to tell you in person but as the circumstances would not allow it, I must write to you instead. My baby boy Draco was born. If you come to your senses, perhaps you could meet him. He is an absolute delight. I know you will love him. But I won't bring him to Azkaban, Bella.
> 
> Your loving sister.

Bellatrix wanted to burn it, but without her wand, and weak from hunger, nothing happened, and her cell remained as dark and cold as it has ever been.

When he returns, she told herself, when he returns, Lucius will pay most dearly. She thought of the cup in her vault, and of the promise he had made to her: _I will teach you how to make one of your own. We will never part, my Bella. I will love you forever._

The others could not understand a love like this, a love that transcended everything, even death itself, a love that only the Dark Lord could give her. The others, they sought only to gain, to compensate for their own weakness, to supplement their strength. He – he was invulnerable and invincible, lacked for nothing, and his love was pure and potent. It was only right that he would demand to be loved completely and absolutely. And if his earthly body had indeed been destroyed – what was her suffering compared to his? Her sister did not know what love was, Bellatrix realized. Narcissa's love was the love of family ties and pretty things and dignified pleasantries. _When he returns, we will laugh at them together._


	2. Blood/Alcohol

“No.”

Severus was resolute. Resolute was putting it mildly – he reminded Regulus easily of the portrait holes when confronted with a student who had forgotten their password, only there was no secret code that might make him change his mind.

“Why not?” He demanded.

“Why do you suddenly want to meet my parents? What good does your miniscule mind believe could possibly come of it?”

“Are you trying to insult me so that I forget all about my original question? Bloody likely, my mind’s not actually miniscule.”

“What good,” Severus said slowly, enunciating and exhaling, “does your mammoth-like gargantuan specimen of a mind believe could possibly come of it?”

“Well – what harm?!”

Severus was not prepared for this, and he had no answer. He only knew that the thought of going within miles of Spinner’s End evoked such sheer horror he could not contemplate it, not even as a joke.

“You captured and killed Lord Voldemort, what’s the worst that could happen?”

As Severus sunk deeper and deeper into one of his trademark tortured silences, Regulus grew angrier and angrier with him.

“What is it this time, then? Someone put another silencing spell on you? I thought once we were married you would be different, Severus.”

The full impact of what he had said took a moment to sink in. Regulus froze, and his mind screamed at him to say something, anything, to make it right, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment, then,” Severus answered, and made a point of fastening his traveling cloak the proper way and not slamming the door behind him as he left.

He Apparated to Knockturn Alley, where he hoped to lose himself among the masses. The street was always busy and the patrons of the businesses that operated there were not keen on staying there too long, and certainly not on making conversation. He had forgotten, however, how famous he had become. He used to try to be patient and polite to the people who pestered him with questions, but he was not in the mood for this today, and a crowd of people pointing at him and whispering never failed to make him prepare for the worst.

For lack of a better idea, he Apparated next to Godric’s Hollow, in the hope of spending the night at Lily’s, but as he appeared on her doorstep he had the premonition that Lily would take Regulus’s side, and he no longer wanted to speak with her either. She would never understand. She might have been from Cokeworth, like him, but she was from the good part, where the windows weren’t boarded up and where the houses weren’t built back-to-back.

Taking unusual liberty with money, he booked a room for himself at the local inn.  _ We need some new friends, _ he told himself: Who could help him understand why he was feeling what he was feeling? After all, Regulus was right – Severus had nothing to fear and nothing to prove to anyone, and worst of all, Severus too had hoped he would be different once everything was over. But in Spinner’s End, he doubted that anyone – not even his mother – had heard about his Order of Merlin, or would care, and he never wanted to set foot there, or think about it, ever again, and the only thing he wanted less was to bring Regulus.

***

Regulus sat frozen on a chair in the dining room and held his head in his hands. He felt dizzy, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Kreacher standing equally helplessly, as he was not sure whether he should say anything, or whose side he was meant to take.

“Fucking magic,” he mumbled. He would have run after Severus, but Severus surely had Disapparated by now, and other than “not Cokeworth”, Regulus had no idea where he might have Apparated to.

_ What was I thinking, saying that? “I had hoped you would be different?!” I should have told him he was perfect to me. All I wanted was to see where he had come from. _

On the upside, if Severus had Apparated anywhere, it could only be Lily’s – he was no longer welcome at the Malfoy Manor by himself, nor was he particularly eager to return there, having spent the crucial hours of the final battle trapped there.

He put on his own travelling cloak, buttoned it, and went to look for a corner wherefrom he could Disapparate. As he did, he grew cross with Severus yet again. After all, it was only out of respect for Severus that he had consulted with him about it in the first place.  _ If I want to go to Cokeworth I can do it on my own. March over there and introduce myself to my in-laws right now. _

He knew Severus’s mother was a Prince. She was a witch of wizarding descent, but the Princes were not so important that he had learned anything about them at his mother’s lap.

On the spur of the moment, he had another idea of where he might go, and he Apparated to a remote wizarding village where lived one of very few people in the world who could understand him. When the door opened, he held his hand out to shake the hand belonging to a man he had met only once before, whose name had been taboo since he could remember himself.

“Hi Ted. Is Andromeda around?”

He found his cousin, who so resembled her older sister, with a child of about six on her lap. The house looked warm and happy, and the child looked at him without fear. “Run along to your room, Dora,” she told the child.

“Yes mommy,” Dora obeyed and disappeared up the flight of stairs.

“I’m surprised to see you, and on your own.”

Regulus took a tentative step further into the living room. “Thank you for letting me in.”

The atmosphere was stiff and uncomfortable – they had last spoken at the wedding, and before that… Andromeda had been disowned when Regulus was only a child. He had barely any memory of her.

Ted walked into the room carrying drinks on a tray, and Regulus knew that if his parents had seen this, they surely would have commented on the lack of culture – carrying a tray like a squib was unbecoming to say the least. “I know what you’re thinking. I can barely avoid a spill the muggle way, it’s no good to levitate it.”

Regulus took a butterbeer, and its warmth emboldened him. “So – I wanted to ask your advice about something – have you ever, um, been to meet Ted’s parents?”

“Are you  _ trying _ to get disowned?” Andromeda asked him.

“I would have been disowned a long time ago if there was anybody else left to ‘carry on the Black name’”.

“Must be nice,” Andromeda Tonks replied, not without a trace of bitterness. “Of course we’ve been. I didn’t have anything left by way of a family, did I? Why wouldn’t we have? They’re a lovely bunch, the Tonkses.”

With her last words, Andromeda had unwittingly unearthed the problem. Severus had always been reluctant to talk about his home life, even after he had confessed about where his scars had come from (and then confessed again, as Regulus had been obliviated), and Regulus worried that to say too much about this to Andromeda would add insult to injury. Instead, he said something he didn’t mean. “I’m sorry I never tried to speak with you before.”

“You’re not.”

This was proving tiresome and futile. After several moments of awkward silence peppered with empty pleasantries, Regulus decided to pretend he was feeling unwell. “I don’t think I should have more butterbeer,” he said. As he approached the door, Andromeda quickly said she would be glad to have him over again some time.

_ So it wasn’t a complete waste of time then, _ he thought. He wondered if the answer was something obvious that he would have understood already, if he had not been obliviated. Regulus remembered perfectly clearly that Severus hadn’t hesitated when he decided to fight Voldemort on his own. What could be so frightening about Spinner’s End? Even a mediocre wizard could stand up to a Muggle, and it wasn’t like Severus still had the Trace on him.  _ He has a bloody Order of Merlin, he could cast an Unforgivable on the Muggle in front of a dozen Aurors and no one would bat an eye. The next time we speak, I ought to remind him that he can really do whatever he pleases. _

***

Entertainment options were few at the inn. Severus turned the radio on, and then immediately off again. The WNN was dreadful. A copy of the Prophet lay open on the desk, and Severus skimmed it.  _ Rubbish.  _ With little else to do, he decided to go down to the pub, which was gloriously empty.

“Oi, you’re not Severus Snape, are you?” The barkeep inquired.

“I am.”

The barkeep handed him a glass of amber liquid. “Ogden’s. On the house.”

“‘Ta.”

“Death Eaters kept coming around ‘ere, roughed up the place. Scared off customers, asking about a couple of Dumbledore’s soldiers who had lived in town. People stopped coming. Nearly ruined us.”

_ Lily and James,  _ Severus realized. He raised the glass in James’s memory. “To the thugs and the swines,” he said, knowing the barkeep would think he means the Death Eaters.

That was all the conversation he was willing to have. As the free drinks kept coming, he grew more and more taciturn. “Not up for a bit of talkin’, then? I s’ppose even with an Order of Merlin a man sometimes needs a drink.”

“I don’t need a drink,” he retorted with some difficulty. “There’s nowt to do here, innit.”

_ Shit. I’ve had enough. _ He dug up some coins from his robe pocket, slammed them on the bar, and staggered up to his room. Try as he might to forget about Spinner’s End, Spinner’s End remembered him.

He’d first seen an inn when he was eleven. His mother had picked him up at King’s Cross, after the first year had ended. It was only after hours had passed that he had summoned the courage to ask her: “Mum, when are we going home?”

“We aren’t going home, love.”

Severus had been struck dumb. He hadn’t wanted to go home very badly - while still under Lucius’s wing and on speaking terms with Lily, Potter and his gang hadn’t yet reached the heights of depravity they would attain. Adult Severus realized, finally, that his “existence” had become more and more bothersome the older James grew and the more fetching Lily got. But that night at the inn had been before all that...

“Where are we going?”

Eileen ran her hand through her hair - her ring was gone. “Sold it,” she explained as she noticed him staring. “I thought we might stay with my family for a bit.”

“Has he been very cross?” Severus asked her.

Eileen didn’t speak. “Tell me about Hogwarts,” she asked, and stroked her son’s head. “Is it nice over there?”

He didn’t want to upset her, and really, it hadn’t been so bad; he told her about his favorite lessons and about Lucius. He had done well on his exams and she was very pleased. “I’ve never been much of an academic, me,” Eileen laughed.

He fell asleep with his head on his mother’s lap. “Get up,” she said. “Breakfast.”

After a quiet breakfast, they returned to King’s Cross to take a train - but it wasn’t the train to Manchester. “Could we not go by Apparition?” He wondered.

“Been too long,” she said. Severus had long wanted to try Apparition, but no one in Cokeworth could show him, and it was impossible at school.

Severus listened at the door as his mother and the grandparents he had never met talked. “You can stay,” his grandmother told his mother. “Your brat can go back to his father.”

“I can’t, mum. I can’t leave him. He’s a good boy, you don’t even know him. He’s not like his dad.”

“Looks like him, with that nose. Couldn’t even pick a better-looking Muggle, then?”

Eileen broke down in tears. “Please, please mum, he’s at Hogwarts for ten months out of the year anyway - hasn’t returned for Christmas either. Tobias beats us. You don’t understand.”

“You call yourself a witch?” Her father finally spoke. “I’m ashamed you named him after me, ‘Leen. He’s your child, your responsibility. Not ours. His father can take him, it’s only right.”

Severus did not remember what lie his mother had told him about why they couldn’t stay, but he appreciated it all the same, because he did not want to admit he had been listening. As he could not ask her about everything mum and her parents had talked about, he tried to forget it.

They found another inn and had a quiet meal of fish and chips at the pub. “Eat everything, love. You’re a growing boy.” She hadn’t eaten herself. He was the only child there, and he hadn’t had anything to eat in such a long time, he devoured his meal and stared down at his empty plate. “Have you made lots of friends in Slytherin?” She asked him. Severus realized she was trying to take her mind off things - she had already asked him that yesterday.

“Some,” he answered. “But Lily’s my best friend. She’s in Gryffindor.”

Severus’s pain must have shown on his face: He would not see Lily for two months? And how would he explain to her where he’s gone? Both of them pretended to sleep at the inn, and both their stomachs growled. He was not, altogether, unhappy, when they took a train to Manchester, and then to Cokeworth, and then embarked on the long walk to Spinner’s End, to the very last house. His dad had been sleeping on the sofa with his belt in his hands, and when the door creaked, he woke up.

“Sent you back, have they? I knew they would,” he said, and Severus squeezed his mother’s hand, and she squeezed his back.


	3. Ring/Ring

Summer of 1971

“How do you know I didn’t change my mind?” Eileen demanded, but her confidence was false, and Tobias could always tell.

“Not before you sold my grandmother’s ring.”

Eileen gulped. “You shouldn’t have returned without it, ‘Leen,” Severus’s father warned his mother, and though his voice was almost warm, his eyes were cold. In an instant, he transformed into a forgiving man, as he put his hands on his wife’s shoulder and pulled her into the house, as he lowered himself to meet his son at eye level to ask him how he liked that school of his. “You must be tired, such a long trip,” he said. Severus expected punishment, had even had the words on the tip of tongue –  _ I only did what mum told me to, I didn’t know where we were going  _ – but nothing happened.

As Severus began to fall asleep, he felt love for his father, a rush of gratitude for what he’d been spared, for how his father  _ didn’t  _ send him and his mom away. He felt a twinge of shame for how fast he would have blamed his mother for everything. Above all, though, he felt relief. This, at least, was familiar. He knew the Moors, he knew the town, he knew Lily, and he didn’t want to think of what his summer would have been like if they’d gone to live with the Princes.

“I assume you know how you’re going to bring it back,” Tobias said over an English breakfast the following day. “It was my grandmother’s, and I’d hoped to pass it on to this one if he ever has children.”

Everything was  _ his _ , paid for with his salary, or from his side of the family, everything except the old magic textbooks. Eileen’s eyes were red. “I’m sorry, Toby, it’s –“

“So. You can’t even witch it out of the pawn shop, then, you useless cow?” The words reverberated in the small kitchen. “What good is all this magic business for, then? We sent him to this poofter school instead of a proper one so he can learn how to go soft and useless like his cow mum?”

You could hear a pin drop. “The Ministry will come,” Eileen pleaded. “I can get the ring back but there will be questions.”

“Give it to me,” Tobias ordered. Eileen obeyed with shaking hands, and Severus wondered what his Muggle father could possibly do with her wand. His first guess was that he would hit her with it in the hope that the symbolism would drive home some obscure point, but Tobias only studied it. “How much would it sell for?” He asked her.

Her voice quivered as she explained that her wand had chosen her, that second-hand wands didn’t go for much because it’s so individual. Again, Tobias nodded and seemed every bit the reasonable man as he took his wife’s words in, and then he snapped the wand in two with the full strength of his working man’s hands, extracted the magical core within the wood and let it fall to the ground. “Oi, you lad,” he said, and Severus only realized what had happened when he was already mid-run toward the Evans house. He had always been fast, and his feet must have realized what his father wanted to do before his brain did.

His father’s shouts followed him: “Where do you think yer going, scrawny shite,” but he did not listen, he heard only the wind, and only stopped to breathe when he saw Lily. He inhaled violently and tried to tell her, “your wand, I need your wand,” but she only stared at him, perplexed. Finally, when his heart and breathing slowed down enough to explain what he needed, they walked up to her room and she pulled it out of her wardrobe. “Unbreakable charm,” he heaved.

“What?!”

“Just, please, Lily.”

He did not want to tell her that his father would break it, would force him to leave Hogwarts, would take away even that which did not belong to him.  _ Would make sure I’m trapped here forever like him, working at the mill. _

“But I don’t know how!”

Severus had read his mum’s old books, and he was confident enough of Lily’s magic that she would get it right. She was the best in the year at charms, after all. He told her the spell, explained the theory behind it, and hoped. She never thought to wonder about the Ministry as she attempted the incantation, and Severus did not have the courage to make sure her spell had worked. He would find out soon enough, he reckoned.

“Thanks, Lil. I’ll see you,” he said, and rushed out before she could ask what had happened.

His mother couldn’t recover the ring without breaking the statute of secrecy, Severus realized, because her only idea was to charm the ring out of the shop or confund the proprietor into selling it back to her for whatever she had left of what she got for it. But the proprietor kept books, and the books would prove that he’d somehow been cheated, and the whole town would know that the Snapes are thieves. If that happened, the Ministry would be the least of her concerns. But that did not mean that he could not confund the pawn shop owner into giving him a summer job, or at least ask for a job, even if he was a scrawny lad from the last house on Spinner’s End who wore dreadful clothes.

_ That’s why you’re in Slytherin, _ he told himself, not without a hint of pride, as he walked back into the house with a promise that he would recover the ring.

***

As the summer between her sixth and seventh year drew to a close, Bellatrix reflected on her time at Hogwarts and what was left of it. She had made a name for herself as having something of a temper in her very first Astronomy lesson, as Madam Sinistra had just had the class recite the names of the planets in the Solar System. A bespectacled Ravenclaw that reeked of Muggle sneered and said that she had learned that years ago, and she barely got to Venus before Bellatrix made to push her off the roof.

Letters had been sent, detentions had been assigned, and Bellatrix could never fathom what all the fuss had been about - the girl had been administered a hefty dose of Skelegro and had come back, good as new. All around her, people seemed to be making a show of pretending that this incident was significant and to be taken seriously: She might have gotten off with a very public slap on the wrist from her Housemaster, but it should have been nothing.

Her parents had explained to her that it was all politics - the recently appointed Head had set new politics and everyone had to pretend to care. “The name of Black will outlast this crackpot’s tenure, I believe,” her father had said to her, and he seemed very proud of his eldest. “Under your great great great grandfather, the thief of magic would have been punished for speaking out of turn”, he had assured her.

Perched on the edge of her bed, Bellatrix looked at her wardrobe, which concealed a white dress, adorned with pearls, and sighed.  _ So much for the name of Black, _ she complained to herself: She would become a LeStrange in less than a year. It was a fine name by all means, yet she could not help but to feel that her fate had been decided no matter how well she might do on her NEWTs. As for the name, Bellatrix only ever had sisters, and her first born male cousin, who was about to start his second year, was not showing great promise.  _ She  _ held great promise, but whatever she might accomplish, she would accomplish as a LeStrange. She could think of nothing respectable to do with herself that would be more engaging than getting engaged. She looked at her still-barren ring finger and sighed again.  _ One more year of freedom left, and after that - marriage, children. _

Rodolphus did not thrill her, but she supposed that what was good enough for her mother was good enough for her, and her parents never seemed very happy or passionately in love. She knew she had to put to rest her dreams of a perfect love as a childish idea, not befitting an adult.


	4. Shower/Tin Bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder that I'm very open to suggestions, criticisms, and reviews in general, because I really am fumbling in the dark, still. Hope this is/remains interesting <3 Thanks for reading!

Severus woke up at the inn, disoriented and dehydrated, with a splitting headache. He stumbled over to the window and closed the curtains, worried that doing it magically might result in an accident.

He washed his face in some cold water and scowled at his own reflection:  _ You need a shower. _ Grateful that the inn had proper plumbing, he turned the hot water on and tentatively put his hand under the stream to feel the temperature. He liked it hot, almost scalding, as it seemed to clean him more effectively. It was a rare treat – at home, the Snapes showered in a tin bath, and by the time his turn would come the water was cold, slimy and sudsy; at school, he learned that hot water made the scars on his skin more visible, and he liked to shower first, before everybody else had woken up, or last, after they’d all gone to sleep. Both had meant his showers were never as long as he would have liked.

The Malfoy Manor and then Regulus’s flat were the first places where he could do this exactly as he wanted – but when Regulus was home, he was again wary of coming out of a hot shower with the white scars contrasting so vividly with his red skin.

_ And now he wants to go there, _ Severus remembered. Other people would have been uncomfortable, he was sure of it, but to him, the heat was cleansing, humanizing, almost caressing. Normally, he would have been worried about the water bill, but he remembered the inn keeper’s words: It was only thanks to Severus that the innkeeper still had a business to run.  _ In any case, you can afford to give him a generous tip,  _ Severus told himself. He allowed himself to get lost in thought as he sweated the alcohol out through his pores.

Severus could just picture it, Regulus Arcturus Black in the tiny living room, or in Severus’s childhood bedroom, that shared a wall with his parents, and where flies buzzed in the summer. Regulus and the Muggle, two people so unlike one another Severus could hardly class them as the same species.

_ You’re lying to yourself,  _ a voice came to him, and now that he was a well-versed Occlumens, he knew that he could banish this voice as quickly as it came, but he didn’t. Regulus had despised the Muggle from the very beginning, if not because the Muggle was a Muggle, then because of what he had done to Severus. As for the general state of the Snape house, Regulus had only recently learned that some Muggles do not live like animals – he would hardly be shocked to see that some of them indeed do.

It wasn’t the Muggle, Severus admitted to himself: It was the witch. The witch he had left behind to go to Hogwarts, the witch in whom he had never confided about his misfortunes there.  _ You abandoned your mother there,  _ he told himself, and the water was suddenly too hot, from scalding to scolding. He turned it off and walked out to grab a towel. It was much softer than it looked, the clear product of a well-executed fluffing charm. The mirror had fogged up and he could only make out his face when he looked very close up.

He was not mad at Regulus, not really, although Regulus could certainly have been more sensitive.  _ She wasn’t at the wedding.  _ Severus balled his hands into fists – he had been more concerned with shoving his happiness in the Princes’ faces than with her. They had invited her, of course, but not  _ him, _ and he was no more likely to permit her to attend her son’s wedding to a man than to perform at the Royal Ballet. Severus could picture the scene that must have transpired when the owl bearing the invitation had come.

***

In the end, a man has only his reputation. At least in Cokeworth, where there was not much else. But Tobias had long suspected that this was the case everywhere on earth – what little he had seen of it, confirmed as much. He was not so ignorant that he did not know the lengths people went to to enhance and protect and cleanse their reputations. 

Everything could be taken from a man – everything but that. No matter how smart or ambitious or creative you were. And he knew he was smart, he always had, smarter than was good for him where he was born. He had dreams of being a scientist, or an engineer. His brains had captivated that wife of his in the first place. Talk about too smart for his own good… he knew there was something off about her, and he guessed it – he had guessed it – she had told him she had had to modify his memory when he first realized it, because it was a massive violation of the Statute of Secrecy. The truth had only come out after they had wed, and though Tobias Snape could never admit this out loud or even to himself, he resented the violation he himself suffered all so that the Statute would remain intact. Eileen had been drawn to his brain, to his broad shoulders, and his rough manner, that was so rare in her world, but he suspected that she never wanted to marry him. What could a witch want with him?

But she got pregnant, and Tobias was the son of a good man, who had raised him well, even if he didn’t hesitate to resort to harsh discipline. Snapes don’t leave their pregnant women. Snapes provide.

Being married to a witch turned out to be nothing more than a nuisance. She couldn’t use her magic on what she had termed Muggles, because of that blasted Ministry of theirs, and anything that could be even moderately beneficial was too risky. The odd cleaning, heating, or drying charm was nice, but she knew nothing about the Muggle world, or how to get by without magic, and she tested Tobias’s already limited patience to no end.

Their son was just like her. He looked like her, except the nose, but otherwise, Tobias felt for certain that the child had inherited nearly everything from his father – his brain most of all, and the temperament that came with being too smart for one’s own good in Cokeworth. He was a weird ‘un, quiet, unpopular, and with Severus for a name… Tobias often asked himself if his wife had somehow magically got him to agree to that name.

When Severus returned home without the milk and fags he’d been asked to bring, and said he was kicked out for stealing, Tobias knew exactly what had happened. The little dunderhead had done it on purpose. He had stolen. And if this got out, everyone would think the Snapes are thieves.

Being known as a thief was a bad thing, the worst thing that could happen to you in this place. Every time they let people go, they first eliminated the suspected thieves, and word spread as fast as wildfire.

Tobias had no choice.

Severus was not old enough for the belt. But if he was old enough to steal… he had to be punished so that people would know. “He’s only a child, he didn’t mean it,” Eileen tried to intervene, but the cow still didn’t get it – and if she had to learn the hard way herself…

Of course she was soft, with a family like hers. He had met them, of course, the “Princes”. They looked like nothing much to him, but since they were magical, they looked down on him, a hard-working man who had only tried to do right by their daughter.

His only fault was that he was too smart. If he had let it go, and never figured out that she was different, he would have married someone else, a normal girl, and they might have lived a normal life, and have had a normal child, with a normal name. A smart one, whose dreams could come true, who could have made his da’ proud. But Severus seemed to only ever talk about Hogwarts from the moment he had learned to speak. Not good at football, not interested in anything Tobias cared about, contemptuous toward his concerns about the Muggle world.  _ This isn’t what I work so hard for,  _ he thought, and he became increasingly bitter, alienated, drunk, and violent. And so he lost his reputation too, and it only added insult to injury when his son turned out to be a queer.  _ He would not even give me little ones, that ungrateful little shit. _

“Black?” His wife rubbed her eyes as she read the invitation. “What in the world? How in Merlin’s sake did he manage that?”

“When are you going to learn we don’t speak like that?”

There was no chance in hell he was going to that sham of a wedding, and neither would his wife.

Tobias could only hope that his son and whoever this “Regulus” was would never ever set foot in Cokeworth to rain further disgrace on his already disgraced head.


End file.
